In order to comply with the regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration, International Civil Aviation Organization, or other regulators, it is necessary to gather and consider appropriate information before and after flight. Similarly, certain information may need to be gathered and considered before and after flight in order to comply with an airline's company policies, and to generally provide for safe operation of an aircraft. This information is typically gathered during a preflight or a post flight inspection.
One aspect of the pre or post flight inspection may include a walk-around inspection of the aircraft. These inspections may be performed by flight crew using printed material such as a checklist.
The use of printed checklists to perform walk around inspections of an aircraft may present several problems. First, printed checklists are not necessarily tracked item by item and it is possible to miss critical items on the checklist. Similarly, flight crews may become accustomed to routine inspections and may ignore some of the items on the printed checklist. In addition, printed checklists are not able to highlight problem areas, such as recent maintenance issues with the aircraft or other potential problems based on the particular aircraft subject to the inspection. Printed checklists are static documents that cannot provide information beyond what is printed on the page. In addition, printed checklists are inflexible and subject to space and formatting constraints. These constraints may result in printed checklists that do not provide sufficient detail for the particular aircraft and circumstances to allow the flight crew to determine whether to pass or fail an item on the checklist. Last, current methods for performing a walk around inspection of an aircraft do not provide dynamic communication of the results of the inspection or compliance information in real time.
Therefore, there exists a need for improved methods and systems for performing and documenting a walk around inspection of an aircraft.